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Question: Why are so many people concerned lately about their appearance that they are willing to spend so much money to look younger and more beautiful?

Answer: In the old days, people did not give much importance to appearance. However, in today’s world, it has become very important because we are developing in our egoism and it increasingly binds us to the physical, material life.

Our ego wants to become similar in this material life to the spiritual world. Egoism is developing so much that it promises to provide us with the best life, to extend it endlessly to give us enjoyment and to look attractive, young, and strong in the eyes of others.

The general process of evolution, according to the program inherent in us, leads us so that we rise to the new degree of development, the spiritual one, and begin to live in the form of forces, spiritual qualities, not physical bodies, experiencing life only through the body.

To move to a higher level of existence, we first must make sure that we do not expect anything good from our bodily life. It can be neither eternal nor happy, and all its acquisitions are worthless.

Therefore, we must go through all kinds of states—the pursuit of wealth, honor, power, knowledge, and external beauty—to disclose the complete insignificance of these desires, that they bring no fulfillment. It is impossible to reach full and eternal contentment with life through them.

This is a time when we seemingly chase eternal life. In other words, we are trying to keep eternal youth. But as a result of this race and much wasted effort, we are to understand that this goal has no real value.

It is impossible to achieve either eternal life or true inner fulfillment in this way. The desire to look young and beautiful is given to us so that having been disappointed in it we would choose a higher goal.

This higher goal is really eternal. By reaching it we begin to live not in our physical bodies but in desires, aspirations, and intentions.

The desire to preserve eternal youth is just a certain stage of our development. After that, there will be the fashion to freeze one’s bodies, hoping to revive them in the future when more advanced technologies will emerge. But even in this approach we are destined to become disillusioned and realize that this is not the solution.

All of these efforts are intended to lead us to the fact that there is no choice; we must rise to the next level of existence, that is, to make the transition from life in the body to life within the soul. All our life is pushing us toward this goal.

All our life values—food, sex, family, money, honor, knowledge ,and all the fulfillments of this world—are designed to disappoint us and aim us to the only direction, which is to lead us from existence in the physical body to life in the soul.[161461]From KabTV’s “A New Life” 2/6/15